The Expansion of the Russian Empire

Abstract

Russian history holds that Russia’s first settlers were Slavic tribes migrating from the west in the fifth century. In the ninth century the Slays were invaded by the Varangians, Scandinavian Vikings, who followed the Russian rivers to trade with Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. One group of Norsemen, called the Rus, established trading posts at Kiev and Novgorod in Slav territory. Kiev was the seed out of which the first Russian king­dom grew. In AD 989-90, soon after the grand prince of Kiev, Vladimir the Great (980-1015), embraced the Byzantine Ortho­dox Christian faith, the Kievan pagan state was forcibly converted to Christianity. From Kiev, the Eastern Orthodox faith spread to the other Russian principalities.